England suffered the second-worst harvest on record due to a cold, wet and miserable summer.
According to an analysis provided by an invaluable intelligence agency, the wheat harvest was down 21 million tonnes, or 21 percent, compared to last year, while barley was down 26 percent and rapeseed 32 percent. Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit.
Listen to this story on James Meadway’s podcast. macrodose.
England’s booming wine industry was hit hardest, with grape harvests in some regions falling by two-thirds to three-quarters of last year.
unpredictability
This wasn’t just bad weather. Attribution research is a new field of research that uses scientific modeling to more accurately determine whether and to what extent certain weather events are attributable to climate change.
For the UK in 2023 and 2024, scientists say World weather attribution They estimate that climate change could worsen storm rainfall by 20% and that total rainfall could increase by a factor of four with climate change. We can therefore say with a high degree of certainty that the UK’s harsh summer in 2024 will not be due solely to bad luck, but to climate change.
These crop failures have real consequences. Farmers themselves will be the first to suffer losses – the ECIU estimates that farm income across England will be reduced by £600m as a result of crop failures in just the five crops studied.
This could be enough to push them into bankruptcy, as many small-scale farmers are already in crisis, facing rising costs and increasing unpredictability of the weather.
consumed
A third of UK farms will not be profitable by 2022, and farm bankruptcies have soared in recent years. There is growing support for the idea of ​​a basic income for farmers. BI4Farmers The campaign started in April.
This guarantees farmers a constant income, smoothes out increasingly dramatic fluctuations in farm income, and allows them to continue operating.
This is important. Because on the other side of the deal, we all need something to eat. And it is here that the UK food system model is under increasing strain.
The country has relied on imports to meet its food needs for decades, with the total amount of food consumed and produced domestically rising from about 80 percent in the early 1980s to 60 percent in 2023. decrease to less than %.
drought
There was a strong debate about importing food from other countries. The diversity of what we eat has expanded dramatically, with once exotic luxuries like olive oil becoming more of a staple food. Retail sales of olive oil have long surpassed all other edible oils. 2004.
